I’m in the process of moving back home after staying for more than 1.5 years on an NUS student residence. Looking back at the times spent living on campus, I would recommend that every undergraduate spend at least a year living on campus if possible.

The beauty of communal living is the opportunity to interact with people whom you would otherwise not have an opportunity to if you just come to school, attend lectures and tutorials before either rushing back home or rushing to the library to bury one’s head in books.

Had I not stayed in a student residence, I don’t think I’ll have a chance to interact with people from so many nationalities, such as Pakistan, India, China, Myanmar etc. It is interesting to talk to them and find out about their homeland, their cultures and customs as well as their perspective on issues.

I recall an incident early this year when I went on an outing to Chek Jawa with some of the international students staying on campus. That period was the time when there was a huge row internationally over the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. In our group, there were students from various nationalities, and guess what. There was a Pakistani muslim, and there was a Dane!

On our way to Chek Jawa, there was a huge discussion between the Pakistani and the Dane over the issue. The Pakistani student was emphasizing on the need to be sensitive, while the Dane was trying to get the Pakistani to see his point that it’s their culture to draw cartoons on everything. It was quite a heated discussion, and the rest of us (mainly Singaporeans and Malaysians) were sandwiched in between the two guys’ discussion.

I am not sure if the two of them actually managed to come to a mutual understanding, but I thought that it was a good thing that both sides heard the other. From the perspective of an outsider, I could see each of their points clearly. However, it also made me realise how hard it is to get people to understand each other as well. In Singapore, we’ve enjoyed relatively good racial relations for many years, and post-independence Singaporeans like me would never understand how volatile things can become. This little episode did make me appreciate the relative harmony between different groups of people in Singapore, although I still have my reservations on the means that Singapore employed to achieve this.

Aside from the opporunity of interacting with people from different nationalities, communal living is a great experience of human nature. I got to see first hand how lazy and incosiderate human beings can be. People never bother to clean up after using the kitchen, or they like to leave their toiletries (and sometimes, their used underwear) inside the shower room after bathing. Others like to keep their room clean by sweeping everything from their room onto the corridor, and some people just like to blast music at 1 am in the morning.

I also got to experience the warmth of community living. I like to keep my door open, and people will stop by to say hi, gossip, borrow stuff, sometimes passing along free things (I remember my neighbour giving me some traditional Pakistani sweets, which by the way was REALLY sweet) or just come into my room and watch me engage in some LAN gaming.

The residence I stayed in did not have any raunchy stories, but I’ve heard some stories/urban legends from other residences (examples include females who change clothes without drawing blinds, couples who refuse to keep passionate voices down to even three-somes). Sports competitions, midnight suppers and other acitivities all help to make university life so much more exciting. I’m glad that I made the choice to stay on campus for a part of my university life, and I’ll be sure to remember some of these things for a long time.